The present invention an electronic musical instrument which can divide a keyboard into a plurality of key ranges and allocate different tone colors to the individual divided key ranges, and a control method for the electronic musical instrument.
Heretofore, there have been known electronic musical instruments which can divide a keyboard into a plurality of key ranges and allocate different tone colors (or tone colors) to the individual divided key ranges. Among such electronic musical instruments is one disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2541063, according to which a key code that becomes a split key or split point for dividing the key range of the keyboard is determined in response to a user or human player performing first key depression after turning on a split-mode designating switch, and the key range is divided on the keyboard in such a manner that a key range section equal to and higher in pitch than the split mode is set as a right key range while a key range section equal to and lower in pitch than a pitch one semitone lower than the split key is set as a left key range. Further, according to the disclosure of Japanese Patent No. 2541063, a “main voice” is allocated to the right key range, and a “sub voice” is allocated to the left key range.
In the aforementioned prior-art electronic musical instrument, which one of the left and right key ranges the tone pitch of the key depressed for designating the split point belongs to is determined in advance depending on the model of the electronic musical instrument. Thus, the tone pitch of the key depressed by the user for designating the split point with the intention that the depressed key should be the lowest-pitch tone of the right key range might undesirably become the highest-pitch tone of the left key range, or conversely, the tone pitch of the key depressed by the user intending that the depressed key should be the highest-pitch tone of the left key range might undesirably become the lowest-pitch tone of the right key range.
Further, with the aforementioned prior-art electronic musical instrument, a user's key-range diving operation has to be performed after the user first shifts an operation mode of the electronic musical instrument to a split mode. Further, a user's operating for setting tone colors to the divided key ranges has to be performed after cancellation of the split mode. More specifically, the operation for setting tone colors to the divided key ranges is performed after the operation mode is shifted to a dual mode in the aforementioned prior-art electronic musical instrument, whereas such an operation is performed after the operation mode is shifted to a tone color allocation mode in many other conventionally-known electronic musical instruments. Namely, in the aforementioned conventionally-known electronic musical instrument, there is no linkage between the key-range dividing operation and the operation for setting tone colors to the divided key ranges (i.e., key-range-specific tone color setting operation), and thus, these operations tend to be difficult for a user who is not accustomed to the operations.